Category Archives: all about me

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Before I met my darling husband, I awkwardly navigated the life that is being young, single and, perhaps not so ready to mingle but doesn’t want to be alone like pretty much every young, single adult ever. The amount of awkward that was me was ridiculous.

Kids, I can’t express enough to you how thankful I am that you never knew the young, single me. The fact that you’re alive is a miracle! No, really. It is.

But I was a kind of normal, single young woman and I wanted more than anything in the whole world to have somebody who loves me. So I did what most single, young people my age did – after I went to church and Bible Study that my aunt and uncle encouraged me to go to. They meant well. Like me, they wanted me to meet people and make friends but perhaps I was too awkward even for their church and College/Singles Bible Study. So, after Bible Study, I headed over to the local 18 and older club. Many thanks to that one girl in Bible Study who told me about it too.

No kids, the club is not where I met your father.

Does anyone really meet their forever love and soulmate in the club?

I did mingle…and danced…and maybe drank a little…and maybe mingled some more…and came to appreciate the fact that the club was not the place where I would find my soulmate.

Wanna see my car? It’s a 260ZX and like super cool.

And it blah-blah-blah-blah…

Truth be told, it was a kind of cool car back when I was single and mingling. It’s an even cooler car decades later in 2017. But if the most exciting thing about a guy was his car, I was not mingling anymore.

My darling husband drove a 1973 Pinto Wagon when we met in 1982. I could have cared less about that car because to me there was so much more about this guy – his smile, his eyes, his wit, his attention to what I was thinking that was so much more important than his car…or the 260ZX owned by the bro up in the club.

To the bro in the club, and the Bible Study and anywhere then it’s not about the car that you drive. It never was about the car that you drive.

And today, years later, I am happy to discover that for my daughters and for their friends, that no one cares about the car you drive, bro. No one. Really.

Tonight I shall sleep the blissful slumber that is the truth that I have raised up my daughters right…and the mamas of their friends have too.

And suddenly I move up into a new age category on most surveys. I actually can now get the Senior discount at some fine dining establishments like Dennys and Ihop – heh. My body won’t stop reminding me the number of times I have circled the sun thanks to gravity either.

Happy birthday to me!

I won’t lie, there is a feeling of ambivalence yet at the same time the usual optimism because it is my birthday and I am fifty five…and very much alive! Inspired by photographer Justin Hackworth, I decided to attempt a new photo project which includes a little bit of personal navel gazing – 55 self portraits to represent me at 55. Justin is right, this can be a challenge. But in that challenge I see me as I turn 55 – and, if you will indulge me, so do you.

It’s a whole different lens you look through the older you get. ~ Andre Agassi

This week’s amazing #WomanNursrWednesday goes to the beauty @nicurnmama who has been a nurse for over 26 years from Cali!

Wait…beauty?????

I am honored and I have loved the comments and attention; but beauty????

No, I am not fishing for compliments.

I swear.

The thing is I almost never see it. There has been a lot of self doubt and unwelcome events in my life. Self doubt cultivated and nurtured in an environment that declared there was nothing pleasing to the senses about me, the child, the teen, the very awkward young woman.

Lies. All of it lies. As a mature woman I realize that. I accept that.

As a mature woman I also am acutely aware that a mature….middle aged…woman doesn’t hear such adjectives thrown in her general direction very often. Lines on the face…that crepe-y thing happening on the décolletage in spite of ALL THE SUNSCREEN AND MOISTURIZERS, those freckles or age spots along with the swollen, aching joints on my hands that now look more like my grandmother’s hands than my own make me acutely cognizant of the reality that I am not as young as I used to be. I’m not even going to mention the lumpy, bumpy post menopausal body because it is what it is.

Beauty????

I’m sorry, I don’t see it.

But I will accept. it. I will blush fiercely, almost as red in the face as the ginger in my hair (thanks to my darling, talented daughter, Hollie); and I will say thank you.

When you have no appointments, no particular thing to do or place to be there is sooo much that can be done…so much to be accomplished. So you check that to-do list that is is just too much…but today, at least, it can wait for another day…another day. Today is a slow day and, for once, you are going to to take the time to do slow day kind of things:

Like curling your hair and putting on makeup.

Then take a picture because you know this won’t last. But now it will because you took a picture which will end up being your social media profile pic because it’s a slow day and you have time for that…and because you curled your hair and put on makeup.

A bit self indulgent, I know.

Perhaps I should consider others on a slow day.

Don’t judge. Son is at school. Darling husband is at work. Darling daughters are on their own in the world doing on-your-own-in-the-world grown-up kind of things. Don’t tell me that you weren’t asking the same question about Siri. Well now you know. You’re welcome.